Great Britain

SS4065 AB David Smith Wishart (1894 – 1962)

Tree: WIS0048

On 7 February 1894 David Smith Wishart and his wife Margaret Davidson became parents to their fourth child and named him after his father. David Smith Jnr. was born at 25 Regent Street, Rutherglen and when old enough, found work as a draper’s salesman. On 9 August 1912, when he was sixteen, David joined the Royal Navy and sent to Plymouth, where he was briefly assigned to HMS Magnificent before being transferred to HMS New Zealand on 22 November. The ship was an Indefatigable-class battlecruiser launched the previous year and was sent on a ten-month tour of the British Dominions the year after David became part of the crew.

By the start of the Great War David’s ship was back in British waters, and formed part of the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet. He was present at the battles of Heligoland Bight (1914), Dogger Bank (1915), and Jutland (1916) and eventually rose from ordinary to able seaman. During the war, the ship was only hit once and sustained no casualties.

David was demobilised from service on 10 March 1919 and returned to Glasgow where he married Annie Moffat Dryden on 20 August 1921. At the time he was working as a mercantile clerk, and the following year a daughter named Eilie was born, however; tragically she died in infancy within weeks of her birth.

On 23 June 1923, David and Annie left Liverpool for New York on board the Adriatic. The voyage took nine days, and upon arrival, the couple made their way to Jamestown where they lived at 318 Prendergast Ave. David found work as a metal worker for Spicer Manufacturing and a son named George was born the following year. By 1930 the family had moved to Toledo, Ohio, where David worked as a metal machinist at the Spicer Parts Craft Division, which had relocated to the city during 1928.

In 1940 the Wisharts lived at 443 Pasadena Boulevard in Washington Township and three years later on 17 June 1943 David was naturalised as a US citizen (Annie followed on six years later.) David must have been proud of his son during WW2 as he served in the US Navy on the USS Woodcock and then USS Cormorant. In 1951 David and Annie became grandparents to the first of four grandchildren and lived at Sylvania Avenue in Toledo.

David died from a stroke at his home on 21 September 1962; he was 68.

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